One of the things I enjoy most about this job is helping to resolve the most compelling bar arguments of the day. Who is the better QB – Brady or Peyton? Who is the better wide receiver – Owens or Moss? Who is the better pass rusher – Ware or Porter?

As interesting as those discussions are, the “who is better” argument I have the highest interest in this off-season is which offensive line is better – the Giants’ or the Jets’? There are any number of ways to go about analyzing this, but since I have completed the individual performance metrics for every player on those teams’ offensive lines, I figure we might as well go about it in a head-to-head, metric vs. metric format.

The guidelines will be as follows:

Run blocking – The main metrics here are Point of Attack (POA) win percentage and Yards Per Attempt (YPA). The POA win percentage is based on tape reviews that track how often each lineman is blocking at the point of attack of a running play. In a nutshell, a lineman is given a POA win whenever he creates a crease for the ballcarrier. He is given a POA loss whenever the defender gets past him at the POA. An 80% POA win rate is considered the low end of acceptable, while 90% is considered the gold standard. YPAs can vary greatly depending on the quality of the ballcarrier, but four yards are considered the low end of acceptable.

Pass blocking – The main thrust of pass blocking is to keep the defender from making what NFL scouts call splash plays. Splash plays include sacks, offensive holding penalties, knocking passes down at the line of scrimmage and hitting the quarterback while he is passing. The fewer of these an offensive lineman allows, the better. A tiebreaker in this area will be the types of sacks given up; a lineman who only allows coverage sacks is probably better than a lineman who allows one-on-one sacks (i.e. sacks that are gained in one-on-one blocking situations and happen in the pocket in three seconds or less).

Now that we have those out of the way, let’s take a look at the Battle of New York!

Ferguson – Gave up three sacks and had zero offensive holding penalties against him. Defenders rushing against him tallied one tipped pass at the line and zero times hitting the quarterback while he was passing the ball. Total splash plays – four.

Diehl – Gave up one sack and had one offensive holding penalty. Gave up one tipped pass and two hits on QB while passing. Total splash plays – five.

Pass blocking advantage – To borrow the term frequently used in my friend Nick Bakay’s hugely funny Tale of the Tape reviews (the format of which I am somewhat borrowing for this article,) let’s call this a push.
The bottom line – The metrics clearly show the reason the Giants are said to be considering moving Diehl inside. Advantage Ferguson. Jets lead, 1-0.
Left guard – Alan Faneca vs. Rich Seubert

Run blocking advantage – Faneca is the more heralded run blocker and his numbers are quite good, but Seubert was more consistent and his ballcarriers had a YPA two yards higher. Seubert surprisingly wins this one.

Seubert – Three and a half sacks allowed, two offensive holding penalties, zero tipped passes, one QB hit while passing. Total splash plays – six and a half.

Pass blocking advantage – Maybe a slight edge to Seubert but could also go as a push.
The bottom line: The numbers say that Seubert should have been the one going to Hawaii after the season. Advantage Seubert. Teams are tied at 1-1.

Run blocking advantage – Woody’s overall totals are better not only head-to-head, but also in comparison with his teammates. Woody had the best YPA on his team and the 2nd best POA win rate. McKenzie had the lowest YPA on his team and was third in POA win rate. Woody is the clear winner here.

The bottom line – Woody had better totals in both areas and therefore notches the win not only for himself, but also for his team by a 3-2 total.

Going into this, I would have thought the Giants would have won this hands down, but the metrics show that isn’t the case. The Jets’ line is not only the best in New York; it may also be the best in the NFL.

You do realize that the pass rushes and overall defenses of the teams in the NFC East are far superior to those in the AFC East ? You also realize that the Giants played a much, much, tougher schedule? Favre would have been in a body bag if the Jets played the Cowboys, Eagles, and Redskins two games apiece. The “only” way you can compare offensive lines is by statistics against “common” opponents. Therefore, your analysis is bogus !

Your comment on the centers run blocking doesn’t make much sense to me. Even though O’hara has a 1.1 YPA advantage (7.2 – 6.1) you write “O’Hara’s YPA is very good but Mangold’s YPA in relation to the rest of his line is better.” What exactly does that mean? Just because the jets have generally lower numbers in this category you’re willing to dismiss O’hara’s advantage here? I also noticed that they both had the 2nd best numbers on their respective teams in this category which seems contrary to your assertion that Mangold’s YPA is better in relation to the rest of his line.

It’s true, the Cowboys, Eagles and Skins are tough defenses indeed, but that’s kind of cherry picking. The Jets did play New England twice, and Tennessee, too. And the Giants also had quite a few games against very bad defenses — St. Louis, Seattle, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Arizona.

So I wouldn’t say that your strength of schedule argument holds very much water. But I guess we’ll see this season.

Love the number crunching, but you know what they say about statistics. I agree with TMcE that the whole is often greater than the sum of its parts and with DavidKulesz that the quality of opposition must also be a factor. Nonetheless the analysis is still excellent.

Like TMcE above, and even though the math is sound, I am not so sure about the equation. Your metrics seem fine, but there are not enough of them to draw a solid conclusion.

For example, what about an O-line player’s ability to perform a pull-block? Former Jets Center, Kevin Mawae was outstanding at this play, and even though he might lose at the POA, it created enough time and enough space for Curtis Martin to squeak through for a sizeable gain. The stats would show a loss for Mawae, when in fact it was a win.

Line players don’t just stand in place and push straight ahead, and they act in unison, according to a specific scheme. How about an O-line’s ability to turn a D-line? Or total false-start penalties? How do they perform when overloaded on one side during a blitz – when Alan Faneca drops back into weak-side pass protection? There are probably no metrics to cover this for Faneca, thus your equation would not show it as a win for the O-line, and without including everything that constitutes a gain for an O-line, I don’t see how your equation using individual players would work.

I also think that the Jets have the best O-line in the League, but I am a fan, so what else would I believe? I can’t prove it.

I can see why newspapers are going under writers only look at what they want not the whole picture like what kind of team it is pass or run,opposition,or even the way a team blocks such as zone blocking.

lol, nice try Joyner. Note even close. The Giants line is twice the line the Jets are. The Giants are perennial playoff contenders. The Jets, perennial disappointments. Stats are overrated and really don’t translate to reality. They are for fanboys who have nothing better to do than try and concoct some “expert” opinion using said numbers as evidence. Like the first poster said, the only stat that matters is win-loss. 4-1 Giants with the lone victor being Mangold. Ferguson is a bust, Faneca is overrated, and Moore and Woody are laughable. You should be ashamed of yourself Joyner.

According to my crude math the Giants opponents had 127 victories and the Jets opponents had 120. I guess you could give the Giants opponents 128 since Seagulls (Eagles) had a tie and they had to play them two times. Regardless its not that much of a difference. I divided the opponents wins by 256 (16×16, total possible wins):

Giants .500
Jets .468

Not that much of a difference, but the Giants clearly win in strength of schedule. However, if you look at the the schedules side by side, they had 5 common opponents. All of them non-division. I don’t feel like looking at it again, but it was teams like the rams and seahawks. From an overall win perspective, the AFC East is tougher.

Bottom line is every week in the NFL is tough. I think this article was well thought out and the whole “The Giants had a tougher schedule” is a bogus argument. Saying the NFC East is tougher than the AFC East is BS. If you are gonna blast the article at least have some logic behind your argument….

The strength of Schedule arguement is clear that the Giants a much harder schedule. Andrew says that, “the Giants also had quite a few games against very bad defenses — St. Louis, Seattle, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Arizona.” the Jets played all those teams as well. The Giants played the Steelers, Ravens, Dallas, Philly, Washington and the Vikings, all top 10 Ds, 9 games vs. Top 10 Ds, while the Jets played 2 Top 10 Ds, the Pats and Titans. As a group i’d rather have the Giants O-Line, but i am a Giants fan

This is the NFL, not Major League Baseball. Some things can’t be measured with stats in football. I’ll admit the Jets may have more raw talent on their offensive line. The only place where I’d say the Giant lineman is significantly more talented than his Jet counterpart is RG with Chris Snee. But as some have said, a line is more than the sum of its parts. The Giants line dominated the line of scrimmage much more consistently this season, allowing the team to have 2 RB’s reach 1,000 yards, and affording Eli great protection all year. The Jets line was good, I’m not knocking it. But it was far less consistent this past season despite the talent advantage. Maybe the new coach changes that. We’ll see. But based on last year, I don’t see how you can say the Jets had the better line.

To have any relevance, one would have to factor in the difference in offensive schemes. For example, if one team was more frequently attempting long passes than the other, you’d expect to find its lineman giving up more sacks and tips than a team more reliant on short passes. Similarly, this stat doesn’t allow for differentiation between the more difficult job that interior offensive lineman have in run blocking when their offense emphasizes runs up the middles, rather than those around the ends.

I am a math student, and speaking purely from that standpoint, the whole premise for this article is absurd.

How can you take a mathematical approach to a game like football, where variable such as luck or teamwork are so important?

True, the Giants line may not be the biggest or the strongest, but there was talk about giving the entire line the mvp last year. The Jets were never mentioned in the same breath as the Giants. As for your numbers, if you tried really hard I am sure that you could convince some of your readers that Detroit had the best offensive line in football last year, just by putting statistics into an irrelevant equation.

Assuming your results are correct, maybe you should conlude that the Jets are a group of under achievers, while the Giants have played above their potential. If this is the case, then do your equations really conclude anything? I mean if they dont measure actual results, than what good are they?

P.S. I am a Giants fan, but more importantly I am a New York fan. I like the Jets, and it wasnt the purpose of my comment to give them a hard time. But it irks me when reporters try to do math, apply it to football and draw fictional conclusions.

I’d agree that the article is interesting to read, but there are too many variables within the game to rank lineman individually. What happens when you add all the stats of all five linemen? As a line what is the YPA of the Giants? What is the POA win rate of the Jets? That might be a better analysis. By design they operate as a cohesive unit and I think they need to be graded that way, too.

An interesting thought… So ask yourself this: if the teams swapped offensive lines next year who do you think would make the biggest improvement from last season? Would the Jets have a top 5 run game? Or would the Giants?

Statistics are the easiest way to fool ourselves into understanding and quantifying something that can never be understood – in sports, of course. And I completely disagree that the Jets are a better line. The Giants had the top rush game – the Jets were 9th. The Giants gave up 2 less sacks and averaged slightly more yards per pass play despite being ranked 18th in passing- the Jets were 16th. Also, if we’re to play the stats game the NFC east defenses were ranked 3, 4, 5 and 8. The only AFC East team in the top 10 was NE at 10th and the rest went 14, 15, 16. So there you go. KC Joyner is completely bored at home and is trying really hard to come up with new articles for us bored NFL’ers to read. Next up! Pennington vs Farve!

The Jets OL has the better players but the Giants have the better line. It is not even close. The Jets have the same or slightly better run blocking from their line, but where you see the Giants just outperform is on pass protection, where they communicate much better and do not have the mistakes that the Jets have. As was stated by more than a few other commenters above, the Giants OL as a unit is just much more effective.//www.ultimatenyg.com

@ ULTIMETANYG said:
“The Jets OL has the better players but the Giants have the better line…..The Jets have the same or slightly better run blocking from their line, but where you see the Giants just outperform is on pass protection, where they communicate much better and do not have the mistakes that the Jets have…..the Giants OL as a unit is just much more effective.”

And you can demonstrate the truth of this, how? Just saying it doesn’t make it true.

Sport isnt math. Math helps us after the game is over understand WHAT HAPPENED though, so it is in some ways important.
But I rekon it would be interesting to ask D-line members of any teams who happened to play BOTH the Jets and Giants who the harder team to match up against was.
That would make for a good bit of reading!

And possibly to help with the stats you could get them all to rank the opposition in different areas 1-10.
Then you could keep stats based on personal experience as well.
Haha!

Jack- Everyone is trying to use statistics and I think we can all agree that they are flawed, especially in this Joyner presentation. I’ll show you how one stat is flawed.. The Jets gave up 30 sacks and the Giants gave up 28 sacks. But that was 20 sacks in 16 games and 8 sacks in one game vs the Cowboys when Gilbride lost his mind and forgot how to call a screen pass to stop the pressure. (He called ONE all game, for an easy 16 yard gain at the end of Q3. Ya think that was a little late?) The Giants OL, overall, protected Manning very well, giving up about 1 sack per game. And I’ll be fair, we can nitpick that stat too, because Manning probably held the ball less than Favre.

The bottom line for me is that the Giants OL line has been together for 3 years, 4 of them for 4 years, and even 3 of them for 5 years (only Moore has been there that long), and you can see my bias for playing as a unit and having strong communication. Time together for an OL is a rarity in the NFL, a lost art in the era of free agency. It is an intangible that makes them better as a unit. (Can you explain to me why Moore was released for 48 hours before being re-signed? He is very underrated and gets lost in this silly head-to-head comparison to Snee.)

The metrics here are very incomplete, i think most people who commented agree on that. Strength of schedule clearly shows the giants had a tougher schedule, looking at opposing team records for 2007 (which is what we should look at for 2008, not what actual W-L in that year), it’s actually:

Giants – .520
Jets – .457

big difference. but that’s not enough, of the top 10 sack leaders for 2008, the giants faced 5 of the top 10, while the jets faced only 1. this article is poorly written, you can pick and choose stats to support any argument which is what was done here.

Even though I loved all the number crunching I still think the conclusions drawn was very shaky. Why are you giving an advantage team vs. team using a stat of the player compared to the rest of his team?? That doesn’t make any sense. If you compare the lines as a whole the Jets POA average wins at 88.16% vs the Giants 84.24%. But in YPA the Giants win 6.38 vs. 5.64. In splash plays the G-men have 26 vs the Jets 27.5. All very close numbers and definitely not enough to draw the conclusion that the Jets line is superior.

Nevertheless, as a Giants fan, I would like you to consider expanding your analysis of the Giants offensive line. It is my judgment, I think you need a larger sample to do an in depth quantitative analysis. Since 2006, the Giants offensive line has had the same players and head coach, I think this would be a good starting point. Therefore, from 2006 until present which would include all playoff games, I think would give you a sample of fifty plus games.

From this sample, you can look for trends.

I hope you can answer the following questions:

Over the last two years, the Giants have struggled in the Red Zone. In 2007, they were 12th in the NFL in Red Zone touchdown percentage. In 2008, the Giants were 20th in the NFL . What is going on here? This is a disturbing trend.

John Madden has stated the Giants offensive line is excellent at run blocking. However, they struggle at pass protection. I would like you to quantify Madden’s thoughts.

Giants GM Jerry Reese has stated the Giants are a power running football team. In their playoff match up against Philly, how come the Giants struggled in short yardage? Have the Giants improved in short yardage under Coughlin?

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The New York Times will report on the Giants and Jets throughout the season. You can also find links to coverage from around the league, tips for your fantasy football team and discussion with other football fans.